The Seventh Life of Aline Lloyd

by Robert Davies

  I heard my own words—clumsy and loud—like a desperate explanation from a lovestruck teenager to others who don’t understand, or worse, don’t want to. I knew of her past only those things Aline allowed me to see; I couldn’t describe the details because she wouldn’t reveal them and I assumed it was best that she hadn’t.

  In the silence as I waited for Vienne to speak, I felt a dull ache rising again and with it the nagging questions I wouldn’t press Aline to answer. Had I done so out of considered deference to her position, or was it only my selfish unwillingness to disturb a friendship that moved to a much deeper affection? But worse still, was there still a lingering bigotry about mental illness I needed to destroy so that I would become worthy?

  “Okay, okay!” Vienne replied. “I shouldn’t have said it like that. I didn’t realize you’ve become close but it’s not like you offered me clues or updates in the last three months!”

  Again, the air went dead. Of all people in the world I would rather not offend, my sister is at the top of that list. I felt horrible, fumbling for something to say.

  “I know, Vienne, and…look, I’m sorry for being an asshole about it and not telling you earlier.”

  “It’s okay,” she muttered, and I heard the softened voice she always uses to let me off the hook. “Anyway, how did you get from where you were to where you are now? Did you just show up one day and knock at her door, or what?”

  “No,” I answered, “and it’s a good thing I didn’t. Damon tried that when he was here and it didn’t end well.”

  “Wait; are you saying he hit on the neighbor girl while Isolda was waiting for him down in Spain?”

  “No, nothing like that,” I said quickly. “Aline said he was a bit too loud. Not a jerk, or anything, but just all over the place.”

  “Well,” Vienne added, “that does describe Damon when he was on some new adventure.”

  “I know, so I kept myself at a distance and let her get used to things in her own time. After a few days, I went for a walk out in the back part of my property and she was there. She knew I was Damon’s brother before I told her but we just talked for a while in the woods and she seemed very nice…quiet as hell, but nice.”

  “Okay,” Vienne continued, “fast-forward to now; are you just friends with her, or has it gone beyond that?”

  “A little beyond. Okay, a lot beyond.”

  “Evan, are you sleeping with her?”

  “Jesus, Vienne, is this an interrogation?”

  “Okay, so you are—at least I know the landscape. When did you get so cozy with this girl?”

  “After I got back from Montreal.”

  “What’s her story; is she from there?”

  “Not originally but she’s been here for a few years. She came down from Scotland right after…”

  I stopped for only a moment, but Vienne understood.

  “After they let her go?”

  “Yeah. She was born and raised in Cardiff but she owns a little dress shop in a resort town up on the coast not too far down the highway from Anglesey.”

  “Is this strictly casual or should I consider it exclusive?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Take a guess!” she insisted.

  “I suppose you could say it’s exclusive but I can’t speak for Aline.”

  “It’s been a while since you had a girlfriend, Evan; are you okay with this?”

  Vienne’s question was understandable, but it was the first time anyone had used the dreaded “G” word. I felt like a middle school kid, blushing and fidgety when a sibling pulls out a private detail for all to see at the dinner table while parents are watching over the rims of their glasses to measure the response.

  “When I first got here, I saw her a few times but always at a distance. I didn’t know if that was because of Damon or if she was just cautious. After I got to know her better, she seemed like a different person than the one Jeremy Collingwood described.”

  “How was she different?”

  “I thought she was going to be a wacked-out hermit, twitchy and weird because of her earlier problems. I was expecting an eccentric zone-brain teetering on the edge of insanity, but she’s not like that at all.”

  “She acts normal, like anyone else?”

  “I don’t think it’s an act; she is normal, at least now.”

  “Don’t screw around with this,” Vienne cautioned. “If you don’t know enough about all the stuff that happened to her from before, it’s hard to know for sure she’s normal.”

  “She hasn’t said or done anything that would make me worry, so I figured she got herself squared away and past all that. They wouldn’t have released her if she couldn’t manage on her own, right?”

  “I suppose so, but I’d give it some time before I made a final assessment.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean playing with her in bed is one thing; some kind of deep, emotional commitment is another matter.”

  My thoughts screamed “too late” but I ignored it.

  “I’m taking it day by day and that’s all; nobody’s making wedding plans, okay?”

  “All right, but I want to meet this girl and look her over for myself.”

  “I’m fine, Vienne; you don’t have to do the big sister inspection.”

  “Yes, I do. Are you going to bring her over at some point or do I have to come to you?”

  “I haven’t really thought about it, to be honest.”

  “Well, think about it now. Actually, we’re in a down cycle at work so it could be a good time for me to catch a plane. And anyway, I want to see this rural estate of yours.”

  “It’s just a little farmhouse, Vienne.”

  “I want to see it anyway.”

  After we hung up, I sat for a while to consider our conversation and maybe just to reflect. I couldn’t tell her the reason there had been no plan for dragging Aline to North America because I didn’t have one. It wasn’t for any hesitance or need to delay until we spent more time together in order to satisfy the unspoken requirement for a number of months to pass before such things are appropriate. We want our people to understand we’ve taken the necessary steps to assure them we’re not merely enamored; we need them to know the new person is more than an acquaintance. For both of us, now alone in the world after Damon’s death, it was something different—something more—and I had to make sure of my own intent before selling it to Vienne. I looked around my house in anticipation of the cleaning marathon coming at me like a tidal wave, but more than that, I had to sort out the time and manner in which I would have to tell Aline and hope it wouldn’t arrive as news she didn’t want to hear.

  TEMPERATURES began their slow climb in spring, and the relentless, delightful tides of green swept through the valley to welcome the new season. We spent more time in the trees walking and chatting in a silent explosion of life renewed. Jeremy told me about Aline’s love of the forest, and I remembered the conversation wondering if she hid an alter ego—a passionate environmental activist who talks to her plants and washes them with a spray bottle filled with distilled water, but she was none of those things.

  She went to another place among the giant oaks and stands of birch, a private zone where she changed a little, welcoming and comfortable there in ways I couldn’t fully understand. It wasn’t fashion, cultural identity, or a political imperative. Instead, her comfort among the trees came from something deeper and without regard for image and a perceived need to change the world.

  When we sat on the trunk of a fallen tree, or cross-legged on the carpet of leaves forever covering the forest floor, she smiled at me and asked if I had done those things as a kid. I nodded and told her of a special place in a pine grove not far from our childhood home that seemed to belong only to Damon, Vienne and me. We went there to pretend we were explorers looking for treasure in a faraway land where dragons and wizards lurked in the shadows. A creek wandering through a deep depression with steep walls of sandstone made a good setting fo
r entertaining those fantasies, and I wondered if Vienne would think of the place when we took her for walks in the valley. Aline listened, but she seemed to drift in and out, wandering back through her own memories and childhood adventures, perhaps.

  BARELY A WEEK before Vienne’s arrival from Montreal I completed the furious cleaning exercises, determined she wouldn’t find me slovenly and undisciplined in my new life as a country gentleman. Aline watched and smiled from my couch, and I envied her calm, disaffected manner considering the circumstances. I told her everything there was to know about Vienne, including the certainty she would come under fierce scrutiny as the new lady friend of a little brother, yet it didn’t seem to bother her.

  When she called as they began boarding for her flight in Montreal, Vienne wondered if I intended to bring Aline to meet her at the airport in Liverpool, since her chosen air route from Montreal went through Dublin instead of London. I didn’t know because I hadn’t asked but there was little doubt Aline would quickly agree. Girls from our school days held uniform dread at the prospect of running head-on into my very protective big sister, but not Aline. I had been down that path once or twice, enough to feel the nerves begin to fray when we crossed over the Mersey at Runcorn, angling west toward Lennon Airport.

  Vienne smiled and waved as she moved through a group of travelers after clearing Customs, but she bypassed me and went immediately to Aline. They embraced warmly for a moment, exchanging the expected niceties, but it seemed honest and genuine. Vienne raised her eyebrows and tilted her head at me to signal her approval as we made our way along the concourse. My first moments with Aline had been nowhere near as cordial, but I was grateful for the unspoken détente and decided (wisely) to keep my mouth shut.

  Vienne stayed for a week and we marched her through the routine, showing her the sights in southeast Denbighshire: the abbey and Dinas Brân castle (what’s left of it), the Plas Newydd house because Aline insisted, and again in Liverpool to inspect the array of shrines made to the memory of the Beatles so Vienne could place another check mark next to a completed bucket list item. I introduced her to Jeremy before running her through the local shops, and it was interesting when I felt suddenly like a local.

  We watched rugby replays because Aline assured Vienne it was necessary. I tried my best as we went through an online tutorial for the sole purpose of learning to sing “Land of My Fathers” properly. Aline insisted so we wouldn’t be lost come the day we would be expected to belt it out like a native, so we obliged. She showed us a video online and even I blinked back a tear or two as seventy-five thousand Welsh voices in Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium thundered their anthem as one before the national team went on to beat rival England.

  Some of our time was spent walking in the woods and through the gap where my property points quietly toward Aline’s field, but a day trip to Colwyn Bay was Aline’s chance to spoil Vienne and she didn’t waste it. Both found a comfortable common ground—a summit, perhaps—where each could enjoy the company of the other without concern for me. I’m still unsure how that happened and whether it was allowed to develop of its own accord, but they became friends in that week. When I asked Aline if she ‘helped’ Vienne’s perceptions of friendship, a returned glare and a very firm “no” answered the question.

  I think of those days sometimes and how we crossed over from mildly suspicious new neighbors to a local item and finally to holding hands and strolling without a care in the same place where Aline had startled me as she stood motionless in the leaves. We spoke of Damon and his time there, but mostly we listened to amusing anecdotes Aline recalled after an evening’s discussions matured and wine bottles stood empty on the kitchen counter. It was unexpected and Aline delivered with a skillful comedic timing I never knew she had, but it seemed a stark contrast to the quiet girl staring at me through the trees and I sent a quiet “thank you” up to the heavens for a small favor.

  On the morning of Vienne’s last day in the valley, Aline gave her a woven leather bracelet made of thin straps interlaced in groups of three, and stitched within were seven large beads made of polished amber she bought from a shop over in Chester. I couldn’t know then the significance of seven beads, but it seemed important only that the bracelet had been made by her own hand just as my oak leaf medallion had been.

  Vienne understood the moment’s meaning and she was prepared. While we waited, she went to retrieve something from her suitcase—something for Aline, she said. Vienne returned with two thin, oblong pieces of wood barely eight inches in length and four in width. The halves were joined by a tiny brass piano hinge on one long edge and fastened with a single delicate latch no bigger than a fingernail on the opposite side so that the object opened like a book. The wood was stained and finished in hand-rubbed Tung oil and Vienne handed it carefully to Aline as she opened one half to reveal a length of intricate lace, faded and yellow, on a bed of black satin.

  Aline placed it on my coffee table and knelt to inspect it like a patron in a museum. Vienne spoke quietly and with a voice I’ve rarely heard from her—soft and almost reverent—as she explained the lace was made by our great-great-grandmother, Catrin Rees. She did the lacework for an evening gown given to the daughter of a friend, Vienne said, and that girl was wearing it aboard RMS Titanic the night it slid beneath those icy Atlantic waves. She was still wearing it when the Carpathia’s crew pulled her from a lifeboat the next day, and she insisted the lace had been a good luck charm. The girl returned some of it to Catrin and told her it would bring her good fortune, too. For generations, pieces were handed down (and usually forgotten), but Vienne found it among our mother’s things after our parents were killed. A small length of it seemed a fitting gift for Aline, and I was astonished Vienne would be willing to part with any of it.

  I watched Aline as she held the intricate material in her palm, and her brow furrowed suddenly the way it does when we struggle to fight back against gathering tears, but it was too late and one coursed its way down her cheek. I looked at her in silence as Vienne reached for her and they held each other a moment until Aline smiled and laughed a little before thanking Vienne for her thoughtfulness.

  We put Vienne on her return flight late in the afternoon during a misting rain, and the ride home to Lllangollen was passed mostly in silence. Aline looped her hand around my forearm and the quiet shift from one place in our lives to the next was complete. There was no special requirement or expectation, but knowing Vienne and Aline were at least temperamentally aligned became a signal—an anchor, perhaps. Beyond the unusual circumstances that brought me to the valley, small and unnoticed indicators began to blur and the clues became more difficult to find. It stayed that way until summer when the tourist season arrived, and with it, Inspector Andre Renard.

  When I drafted our narrative for Burke, I understood Renard’s involvement would be of extreme importance because he was the one who lit the fuse. Their determined interest was clear but mostly because of the inspector’s friendship with Gregory Hurd (who, it turns out, was more than Burke’s political sponsor inside Whitehall). I don’t blame them, but Renard’s association with a high-level bureaucrat in the British government made problems both for them and for us because few politicians are good at keeping secrets and fewer still at keeping their word. We went through the notes carefully so as not to miss meaningful context, but there were no startling revelations or the memory jogs they hoped would shine light on those first days when Renard came up from Liège.

  As I began the recollection task it was only that: laying out the events as they occurred. I remembered and noted a precise timeline from the moment he arrived and the rapid burn that brought us to where we are today; by any useful measure, it was the moment everything changed.

  After a while those days became more difficult for me to describe, and I suppose that is true only because I can’t do anything to Renard for the hate and discontent he put us through. I know it’s not an admirable thing to say, but privately, I still regret passing on the oppo
rtunity to get in at least one decent punch.

  Burke was running things again when we got to this point in the debriefing sessions because Hurd’s people needed all the information they could get in the event of a diplomatic “episode” with the Brussels government.

  “Describe those first interactions dispassionately,” he said. “Tell us in academic terms, if you can, and try to bear in mind why Renard was there.”

  Dispassionately? That got a laugh, mostly from Halliwell and the security boys, but even Miss Persimmon snickered a bit. I couldn’t tell them what happened on Renard’s first day in Llangollen because we didn’t find out he was there until later when he asked around in town.

  THE SUMMER SEASON was underway and more than a few cars with continental license plates passed by my house with cameras out the window. Tour groups filter through from time to time and the occasional lost soul pulls into my driveway to ask directions. They don’t seem to make it as far as Aline’s farm because my property is positioned on a more traveled road, but even she gets one or two when the air warms and a full press of people on holiday begins. In town, faces come and go the way they do in all popular tourist destinations and Renard’s appeared in the second week of June.

  He went under an assumed name; we know that from his conversations with people at the Texaco station. Late information from Burke himself confirmed that Renard popped up days earlier in Colwyn Bay, predictably beginning his search with available public records and the relentless efficiency of the internet when you know how to use it. He called himself “Jean-Paul Jacquet,” ostensibly looking for a couple who had been helpful when his nephew was there earlier in the spring. His story sounded plausible enough: college kid on a bike tour through Denbighshire stranded when a wobbly, miscalculated turn landed him in the ditch with some road rash and a damaged pedal. A nice couple—one of whom was an American—gave the boy a lift, and since he was in the area on holiday, he told them, a grateful uncle wanted to stop in and express his thanks. It was clear who he meant so they mentioned us by name. It’s perfectly understandable, and I don’t fault the gas station guys, but it was the confirmation Renard needed.